The Escapade
by Ayn504
Summary: A Miscellaneous drabble archive. Any character, any pairing.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **It has been way too long since I uploaded anything to this account. I write so sporadically nowadays, it's really a wonder that I have anything to upload at all!

Regardless, this will be a miscellaneous collection of drabbles: most of them (if not all) were submitted as challenges to LiveJournal's khdrabble.

HONESTLY I doubt anybody will read these, but, here they are for you. (:

**Smoke and Mirrors**

(Roxas)

reality is only a lie in the mirror  
ɹoɹɹıɯ ǝɥʇ uı ǝıן ɐ ʎןuo sı ʎʇıןɐǝɹ

_We have found you_.

They hiss at him in hushed laughter, silver gnarled fingers sprouting from the earth to grab at his heels, laughing in high, screeching barks. Pavement crumbles to gravel burns to ashes under his feet; the sky melts from blue to twilight to blue again. Technicolor waves ripple into the horizon, yellow sparks bursting when he presses a hand against the wall, as if his fingers are grinding against it like stone.

Roxas thinks he hears muffled cursing amongst the static, watching the train shift to palm trees dissolve to white noise splattered across the ground.

Pence might call it a computer glitch, if it weren't reality.

_Temperature rising._

Unclaimed dreams play across his eyes: a splash of red hair, lifeless on the floor. There's a phantom pain in his chest, and he's falling backwards, backwards, down into chilling darkness.

_There is no time. Commence system shut down_.

He gasps for air as he runs, but each breath chills his lungs, and tastes of burning plastic. Trees collapse behind him, exploding into smoking sparks and flames.

White noise lumps under his feet. Roxas trips.

And falls right into Sora's heart.


	2. Jaded

**Jaded**

(Namine, Larxene, one-sided SoraxNamine)

"You think that's where it's at, but is that where it's 'sposed to be?"

Larxene approaches her one day, while she's twirling lilac around her fingers in blooms of paper foliage and fake dreams.

"Eleven says you're different," Larxene sneers, plucking the crayon out of her fingers. "He says you're a witch of some sort, like you're the exception to some grand rule that applies to all of us."

She does not reply, flattening her palm against the smiles she's scrawled on the paper.

"You know what I think? _I_ think that Marluxia's full of it." There's a faint clatter as she tosses the crayon aside and it snaps against the wall, leaving a faint trace of what should have been flowers along a drawing of an island. "You need to prove me wrong, and do something _special_ with those colors of yours."

She won't let Larxene intimidate her, because she knows that she is not like the other Nobodies. _They_ want their hearts, to be complete again, and they would do horrible things to get it. And _she_, well…

Red is for love, and she smears it on the paper thick, tracing the curves of his lips as they smile back up at her.

Blue is for peace and strength, and she uses six different shades for his eyes; she etches it into shadows in the dips of his skin.

Green is for serenity, and she works it in wherever the crayon touches: the edges of his hair, light flecks in his eyes, a delicate line running along his collarbones.

She smiles slightly, pulling the completed drawing to her chest. She waits with baited breath for him to arrive, for his smile to be more than wax and paper. She wants to see the blue shadows in his skin, and the red on his lips, and the green along his hair.

But when he arrives, the red is too fierce, and he snarls furiously at his friends, because he was so blinded by anger and the desperation to find _her,_ and-

The blue is too dark, and he brushes those friends off coldly, and without another word he abandons them to find _her_, and-

The green tinges his skin, and he stumbles as if he's sick, fighting everything and everybody he finds, all because of _her_, and-

Larxene's howling laughter tears through her paper dreams, and she finds herself trembling, clutching the drawing with whitening knuckles.

"Don't you get it? You're _no_ different than the rest of us." Larxene snaps red, blue, green between her fingers, grinning.

"Your style is a little different, but you are just like us. You know _exactly_ how to lure out a heart and destroy it."


	3. Ectoplasmic Number One Thousand

**Ectoplasmic Number One Thousand**

(Axel, the ghostly inhabitants of The Haunted Mansion)

Understand that matters of the heart and spirit are, more often than not, one in the same

Understand that matters of the heart and spirit are, more often than not, one in the same. For the heart, you see, is fueled, driven by hope, fear, love. Despair. Hatred.

And what of the souls that are prematurely freed from their mortal bindings? They are the beings that tread the earth eternally, lost in the expanses of their mind yet only focusing one solitary, wretched feeling; the one emotion trapped in the heart the moment that last breath escaped.

Betrayal grips Emily, and she flickers in and out of sight while blood runs down her arms and stains the ivory sleeves of her dress. She took her final plunge into the afterlife at the hands of her own fiancée, and she stands rigid in the attic, lamenting: Why Gracey, why am I forsaken?

But Master Gracey is plagued with his own despair, noose still hanging 'round his neck. Elizabeth holds her goblet, swirling about rank, poison-laced wine. She lingers amongst the living through love and patience, for Master Gracey.

"I will wait for you."

And so it is the heart that leaves the spirit to linger, long after the body is dead, rotted and buried. So who is to say, that the heart does not remain close by?

--

The mansion can house up to a thousand ghosts. There are currently 999.

"999 ghosts. 999 hearts. _Some_ mission," he mutters to himself as he rips open a portal, intending to leave the attic.

"'Til death do us part," Constance remarks, cleaver gripped in a ghostly hand.

Axel barks with laughter. "You and me, sweetheart, we're not all that different." The room fills with the stench of darkness, intermingling with the stench of death.

"The way I see it, I'm just number one thousand."


	4. Etchings

**Etchings**

(Riku, Kairi)

Three days after the only girl ever allowed in The Secret Place arrived, Riku found her sitting on the cool sand, scraping fruitlessly against the back wall with a rock. He was notably perplexed by how determined she was, scratching away with a fervor he likened to Sora's whenever they wrestled.

"What're you doing?" he asked.

She waved him closer, to which Riku obliged almost instantly, despite himself. Maybe it was the widely frightened glint in her eyes that lured him, coupled with the fact that he was _Riku_, and whatever views the other children had of him was explanation enough.

"There's _monsters_," she whispered, once he had crouched down next to her. "I have to keep them from coming." She resumed carving, without ever actually making a dent in the stone. Riku watched her movements silently: two curves at the top curled around, and came together to make a point at the bottom.

"Why not just fight 'em?" It was a good excuse to brandish his new toy sword, anyway.

She laughed. "You really wanna fight 'em, Riku?"

Riku hesitated. As far as he knew, monsters had to be fought; otherwise they'd just run around and make a mess, and beat up everybody. Or _worse_. He swallowed uncomfortably, making an attempt to rationalize.

"If they do ever come here, I've gotta fight 'em, right?" he finally reassured her, the confidence reemerging in his voice like the push of the incoming tide. "I gotta protect everybody."

"Then, we're definitely safe!" she said happily. He relaxed.

Ten years after the only girl ever allowed in The Secret Place arrived, Riku tore open the door to the heart of the world, unleashing a slew of golden-eyed monsters. When he glanced down at the crumbled stone, something caught his eye- an etching of some sort, carved into stubborn stone with a patient and persistent hand.

Two curves at the top that curled around, coming together to make a point at the bottom.

Kairi's _heart._


End file.
